Chapter 11 - The Inheritance of Blood
Maya rubbed her eyes with the back of her small hand, her long blonde hair cascading over the shoulders of her light blue dress as she looked up at the tense adults across the room.
"Grandpa?" Maya’s voice was small and fragile in the quiet study. "Is the bad lady gone now?"
Arthur instantly softened, dropping the cassette recorder onto the desk and walking quickly over to the sofa. He scooped the little girl into his arms, pressing her head gently against his black tuxedo shoulder.
"She's gone, sweet girl," Arthur murmured, kissing the top of her head. "You're safe now. Uncle Julian and I are just finishing up some important business."
Julian stood frozen by the desk, his hands trembling as he stared down at the dot-matrix bank receipts spread across the mahogany surface. The numbers didn't lie; millions of dollars had been funneled through offshore accounts for decades, moving in a continuous loop between the Vance Shipping Trust and a shell corporation registered under a Swiss P.O. box that was still active as of yesterday afternoon.
"Arthur," Julian said, his voice strained and tight. "If my father didn't die of a heart attack... if he's the one managing the secondary accounts from overseas... then Victoria wasn't the master mind. She was just the operational proxy."
Arthur turned around, holding Maya securely in one arm while his other hand reached into the open lockbox, pulling out a final, sealed envelope stamped with a red wax seal.
"Open the terminal, Julian," Arthur instructed, his tone dropping into a chilling command. "Run a trace on the IP address of the Swiss account that received the transfer at 10:45 tonight. Let's see who logged into the system right before the security wipe."
Julian didn't hesitate. He rushed back to the corner computer terminal, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with frantic speed. Lines of code scrolled across the high-contrast screen in a blur of green text.
"Tracing... routing through the secure proxy... pinging the node," Julian muttered under his breath, his eyes wide and fixed on the monitor. "The server location isn't Switzerland, Arthur. The ping is bouncing back to a private residence fifty miles up the coast."
May you like
Arthur stopped dead in his tracks. The color vanished entirely from his face. "Fifty miles up the coast? The old coastal estate? The one that burned down in ninety-four?"
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